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Old 12-31-2012, 08:01 AM   #35
Geoff Waddington
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Join Date: Mar 2009
Location: Dartmouth, Nova Scotia
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Quote:
Originally Posted by planetnine
When you say "would not translate", are you saying they are too coarse?

I was thinking of this layout so that LED collars wouldn't be needed and everything would be clear as to it's control function.

You obviously have experience here, what did you feel wasn't working Geoff?
Take a look at this video around 3:30, there are some shots of UAD-2 Manley Massive Passive / C4 integration:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjJ8e4-p_y4

This is about the best map I got in that the "4 and 4" left-right layout mapped very well to the 8 rotaries on the C4 and the push-top switches mapped beautifully for the Cut/Off/Boost and Shelf/Bell functions.

Still it was lacking from a intuitive feel perspective.

I've come to the conclusion that the C4 visuals are just too plain and missing the visual clues -- e.g. the 8 rounded vertical rectangles on the hardware / GUI panel that serve to group the functionality.

It just FEELS substandard.

I the started thinking about the Multi-Touch Screen Faders vs tactile Faders debate and have arrived at the following:

When we humans decide to perform an operation at a location (Solo Channel 12) we use hand-eye coordination to get to the target and push the button.

That's only half of the equation -- the thing that tells us we ACCOMPLISHED this is the tactile feedback from the nerves in our fingers to our brain.

That, I believe is the reason it is so easy to "over click" using the mouse, especially if there is latency between the tactile mouse click and the screen response -- our brain gets confused.

So it would seem the answer is simple, always provide tactile feedback.

Indeed that is what I naively thought when I coded up the FX mappings for the C4.

Over a year or so of use, here's what I learned was really happening, and, as a side effect, points out why there is still a debate over virtual versus tactile faders.

It's not black or white, it's a trade-off continuum !

In the case of the VST FX plugins, the superior visual clues of the GUI's trump the necessarily simplistic visual clues of the generic looking C4 interface, even though the latter has tactile feedback.

On the other hand the new OLED switches mentioned in an earlier post provide a very exciting way forward, with 1.5" 128x128 pixels 64k colors the switch can indicate a lot of information with background color, changing text for changing function, etc.

For instance this would be great for channel strips where tactile is almost imperative.

Say you are going from tracking to mixing, you don't need the "REC" button, so it changes from a red background to another color with different text to notate it's new function, you still retain visual and tactile in this case.

So, I'm not against your concept at all, I agree with it, I'm just sayin' that in the world of fancy VST GUI's we're better off buying a simple touch screen / video card solution and spending our money on other toys like the OLED switches mentioned above.
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